


Pull

by artificer



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Character Study, M/M, Psychoanalysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-19
Updated: 2013-04-19
Packaged: 2017-12-08 22:30:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/766768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artificer/pseuds/artificer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’d like to say it’s a calculated risk, this game he’s playing, but that would be a lie.</p><p>Hannibal reflects on the wisdom of befriending (pursuing) Will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pull

**Author's Note:**

> My first Hannibal fic and first fanfic in about three years. What can I say? This show is just really inspiring.

As he sits in Will’s poorly lit excuse for a kitchen, the table split in shadows it would be too easy to imbue with symbolism, watching Will feast on his secret, Hannibal wonders if some part of him doesn’t want to be caught. If he truly cared for self-preservation, he wouldn’t be here, making a project of Will—good Will, clever Will—who will inevitably find him out sooner or later. There’s only one way this can end; Will can only keep up this cognitive dissonance so long, no matter what trust they build. And with these risks Hannibal is taking—by being here, by trying to siege the forts Will builds around himself—he’s feeding Will the pieces of this puzzle (literally) and pieces of himself (figuratively).

So, he concludes, resting his knife against his plate, watching Will with an unhealthy appetite behind his gaze, he must want to be caught. There’s no other explanation, at least not in full.

Of course he wants an audience. What artist doesn’t? Of course he wants to be appreciated. Everyone does, artful serial killer or not. And Will is the perfect audience, a connoisseur of crime, regardless how reluctant he is to claim the title. True empathy means Will steps inside the minds of killers. He lives the crimes of others; he understands them as thoroughly as Hannibal wants to be understood. He’ll see Hannibal’s design for what it is.

It’s a precarious dance, along this delicate line between his desire for understanding—the cold haunt, silent and looming—and the need for his double-life to continue—a dangerous blaze in need of constant fuel.

It would be easy to think it’s nothing more than this Gordian knot of motivations, but Hannibal is a psychologist—and a damn good one, at that. He studies Will, eyes down and obliviously picking away at his egg and sausage scramble, and he feels a pull that goes well beyond a desire for understanding. His desire goes beyond consumption, beyond the thought of taking a scalpel to Will’s flesh, holding Will’s bleeding heart in his hands, feasting on everything that Will is. Reduced to the most elementary of terms, he _wants_ Will, and he wants him alive.

A montage of images plays in his head, and he sees what it could be like. Will and Hannibal eating breakfast in bed. Will and Hannibal in bed. Will and Hannibal shopping for furniture. Will and Hannibal playing house, playing vanilla, playing at normal. It almost looks simple, easy, attainable.

But there’s nothing about this that’s simple, and Hannibal should really know better. They’re not normal, either of them, and they’ll never have that. He doesn’t want that suburban domesticity. And he knows, deep down, that when reckoning comes, he’ll choose his life (status quo ante) over Will. He’s the negative and Will wants so desperately to be the positive. Opposites may attract, but neither of them can sustain these canyons of contradictions.

“Hannibal?”

“Hm?” Hannibal blinks into focus at the tremor of Will’s voice, and he smiles.

He’d like to say it’s a calculated risk, this game he’s playing, but that would be a lie. This is a catastrophe in the making, but Hannibal doesn’t have the will to stop it.


End file.
